Fashion Designer, Nguyen Cong Tri Shines at 2016 Tokyo Fashion Week
April 11, 2016
Vietnamese designer, Nguyen Cong Tri presented his striking haute couture collection at 2016 Fashion Week in Tokyo last week, charming the crowd with his cutting-edge designs.
Tri honors international haute couture standards, blending them with Vietnamese concepts in the made-to-measure fashion world. He creates state-of-the-art designs, tailor-made for domestic customers with high-quality, trendy fabrics produced with advanced techniques and stunning craftsmanship.
Tri wanted to add a strong Vietnamese element to his line this year. “I’m Vietnamese. Vietnamese culture is always an endless source of inspiration for my collection,” he said.
Tri’s highly-anticipated 2016 collection comes after he took 2015 off to have a break for creativity. “I always want people to be really surprised with my new collections,” he said.
For his latest collection Tri acquired ‘Lanh My A’ silk, a traditional silk found only in a small village of Vietnam in the Tan Chau district. This type of silk is a rare and considered a national treasure in Vietnam. The silk requires a long dye process of being immersed into a dye combined with the local Mac Nua fruit around 100 times to achieve proper color, fabric weight and the desired fine sheen of leather or velvet. The coloring process requires over three months to dye one thousand meters of silk with two tonnes of mac nua fruit.
Historically, upper-class Vietnamese people desired garments of Lanh My A silk because it had shiny, glistening appearance and was durable. Tri bought the My A silk over a two year period just to acquire enough for this collection.
His previous collection opened Vietnam International Fashion Week 2014 and was a great success. Tri spent most of 2015 in the United States to visit other shows. He was also a popular judge on the hit television show, Project Runway in Vietnam. Tri graduated in 2002 from Ho Chi Minh City University of the Arts with a with a Fine Arts degree.
Mercedes Benz will host a second Fashion Week in October 2016. Currently, Tri is in Kyoto, Japan to learn about the construction and design elements of kimonos and Japanese ceremonial garments. Craftsmanship, detail and patterns are all of interest to this fascinating young designer.
